How Overkill Kills Projects - e-PlanSoft

Do you ever wonder where adages come from? “Time is money,” and “less is more.” They’ve been around for ages, and it’s likely because they ring true. But did you ever think about how they apply to your plan reviews? Let’s take a look.

Time is money

This one seems pretty obvious. Taking excess time to complete a project bears a myriad of additional costs, frequently causing projects to exceed budget and finish later than planned. Of course, the most important factor is that the project – and the plan reviews and recommendations – must be performed and completed correctly, effectively, and well. But what we’re referring to is taking unnecessary additional time. You already know that an electronic plan review solution can offer a dramatic improvement in time and budget spent, but did you know that all electronic plan review solutions are not created equal? While there are going to be some similarities among solutions, there are also enough differences among them to have a noticeable impact on how efficient you are – or aren’t – with your plan reviews. That’s why it’s important to select a plan review solution that fits your needs, now and into the future, but doesn’t overload you with unnecessary tools and features. When you have what you legitimately need, will use, and will benefit from, you can operate more efficiently, because what you need is easy to access, without endless hunting for the right tool, page, comment, or report. Intrigued? Let’s keep going.

Less is more

Some might argue this on either side, but let’s think of an example. Have you ever started your day with a fresh reboot of your computer, but over the next few hours find that you have dozens of tabs and windows open? The farther into your day you get, the longer it takes you to find the window you need at any given moment and the slower your work progresses. You start closing the windows that you forgot were even there, and you seem to speed up. Why? Because what you need is easy to find, and faster to get to. Now think about your electronic plan review solution. There are some solutions on the market that include countless tools and features, and in theory, that should be a great idea. But it’s important to remember that the majority of those options are simply never used. Let’s say that again for effect. The majority of those tools and features are never used. Now think about how much time you spend going through the tools you’ll never use to get to the ones you do, and regularly, use. It might be seconds, it might be minutes, but over the course of a project and the course of all projects, the extra time and your diverted attention add up to a LOT of time. That directly affects your bottom line, because on-time and on-budget are critically important.

Did you notice a theme (besides adages are annoying!)?

The electronic plan review market is highly competitive. There are plan review vendors who load up their solution with a plethora of additional features and tools to stand out as a more comprehensive solution. But too often, most of those additional tools are just fluff, and functionally unnecessary. It’s feature overkill, and it costs project participants valuable time in endless scrolling and searching to find the tools they need. To optimize your electronic plan review experience, select the solution that has a clean and uncluttered workspace, a streamlined workflow, fills your needs, but doesn’t burden your project participants with endless, and ultimately unnecessary fluff.

e-PlanREVIEW^® from e-PlanSoft™ was built based on input from the professionals who actually use electronic plan reviews. We’ve developed this leading-edge solution to dramatically increase your efficiency in the plan review process by providing a streamlined workflow and clean interface that gives you virtually all of the tools and features you need, without bogging you down with those that you don’t. e-PlanREVIEW customers have reported up to 50%-time savings in their typical plan review projects. That’s because this best-in-class solution was built with the intention to make your projects run effectively and efficiently.

Want to see it in action?

Try e-PlanREVIEW for yourself to see how easy and efficient it is and how much faster your plan reviews can be. Access our free self-guided demo at https://eplansoft.com/request-a-demo/. Or you can request a demo and our experts will show you the difference it makes to have a solution that gives you exactly what you need, and none of what you don’t.

For more information, contact us at